


A Chris(t)mas Story

by nirvhannahcornell (josiebelladonna)



Category: Alice in Chains, Hole (Band), Nirvana (Band), Pearl Jam, Soundgarden (Band)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Party, Drinking, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Memories, Parody, Vandalism, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21940066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josiebelladonna/pseuds/nirvhannahcornell
Summary: Chris looks back on a particularly eventful Yuletide back in 1991. A parody of A Christmas Story.And Merry Christmas!
Kudos: 7





	A Chris(t)mas Story

Christmas Eve, 1998. Seattle, Washington.  
The snow is upon us here in the Emerald City. I can feel it in my bones. I can feel it as I’m putting on that heavy knit sweater Matt’s new lady April gave me last year, from the itch of the threads on my bare arms underneath to the chill running up my spine.  
Susan wants me to clear out a little bit of the garage before we put the tree back in here come New Year’s. I wanted to wait for a couple of days, at least until after the Yuletide passes, but I know if I wait, it’ll just be put off for weeks on end. I won’t lie in that it feels as though most of everything that’s going wrong with my marriage is because of me. I know I shouldn’t think that but I am nonetheless.  
I’m out here in the garage and I lean to my right to flick on the light. Pale yellow light washes over the cold concrete floor and the stacks of boxes. A year following Soundgarden’s demise, and we’ve found a new house and we still haven’t found a place for all of our stuff. I fetch up a sigh and close the door behind me so as to not let out the warm air in the house. Even though this sweater is itchy, it does keep me warm.  
The first box I spot is a rather big one—I think there’s a box of rocks in here? It’s heavy and rattles around like there’s a bunch of loose stuff in here. I’m drawing a blank on what’s in here as I push it off to the side. There’s another one that looks just like it. And another. And another. They all look the same.  
What was I thinking, putting all of this in here.  
I push another one to the side and much to my surprise, I spot a shoe box right on the floor. On the side, it reads “X-mas ‘91”. A part of me cannot believe that that Christmas was seven years ago. That had to have been the most eventful Christmas because it was the last time we were all still normal people. All of us, even Kurt.  
I pick it up from the floor and set it down on one of the large ones I had pushed off to the side. I take off the lid.  
The memories! Especially when I pick up the folded sheet of bright yellow paper at the far end. I unfurl it to reveal Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice In Chains’ names ascribed up top in black lettering. The year read 1992. I remember this now...

After the Clash of the Titans tour, and Alice In Chains were pretty much thrown out of their set by those rowdy and rough Slayer fans, Jerry high-tailed it back to Seattle on the next red-eye and I didn’t even know he had come back until he called me and said “I’m back, dude.” I asked him how it went there at Madison Square Garden and he engaged in detail about the pieces of trash chucked at them from the audience—one bit of it almost took Sean’s eye out. It put such a damper on the whole show that even Slayer themselves felt bad about it. Even Megadeth were uncomfortable there. The good news and the sole good thing to come out of it was Anthrax finally got paid after toiling for free since they started seventeen years ago.  
We got to chatting a little bit but he couldn’t stay long because he had Courtney waiting on the other line. But before hanging up, I threw out the suggestion of Seattle’s own having something like Clash of the Titans at Madison Square Garden. And in lieu of Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer, Jerry and the guys can have Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. And he went, “hey, yeah! Let’s just hope we don’t get trash thrown on us, though, and risk taking Sean’s eye out.” We engaged in the idea for weeks—I even threw it out to Susan at one point.  
I remember her telling me, “and risk trash being thrown on you and taking Sean’s eye out? Try harder, Chris.” But Kim, Ben, and Matt were on board with it, and so was Eddie. But no one in management gave it the green light. They all kept saying we’d get trash thrown at us and a piece would fly up and take Sean’s eye out. In fact, I recall it being December and wishing that, if not for Eddie’s birthday then for Christmas, we get a Clash of Seattle’s Best. That was my Christmas wish that year: to do what the previous Titans couldn’t with such high expectations put onto them.

There’s a Polaroid tucked into one side that has Kim holding a frying pan up behind his head like it’s a baseball bat.  
I forget where it was here in Seattle but about a week before that Christmas, and the last day on the week of finals down at Evergreen State, I know Kim and Krist were participating in a pretty intense game of beer pong. The only two parts of that that I remember were the winner had to drink the most down without toppling over—and Dave and Bruce Pavitt were both designated drivers that night. The other part I remember is Kim won, drinking down that last red cup of beer and slamming it down on the table before letting out what Krist and Dave both agreed on as the biggest, hairiest belch they ever heard, but he got so hammered, though. He could barely hold his what Bruce called “a major award”: it took me two days to realize it was a black and gray ceramic frying pan with a relief of Bettie Page engraved on the handle, courtesy of the ceramics class there at Evergreen. I remember coming over and Kim showed it to me, to where I saw it and just burst out laughing at it. I also remember his girlfriend at the time Katie kinda rolling her eyes and shaking her head at it. Kim joked about giving it to Hiro, but I don’t think he did, now that I think about it. I wonder what happened to that pan.  
Oh, I remember now. The day before Eddie’s birthday, Ben and Matt spent the night at Kim’s place because Matt didn’t feel like taking the bus home and Ben was stuck on the mainland because the ferries were grounded from high winds and snow. Ben woke up first the next morning to make breakfast and used that pan. Kim also had an electric stove so Ben had no idea if the bottom was getting too hot. He ended overcooking the scrambled eggs he was making for himself, Matt, and Kim, and not without totally scorching the bottom of it. Needless to say, Kim had to get rid of it. Ben suggested taking off the handle with one of his old hacksaws but not without his wife then wondering what the hell is all that noise out in the garage when Ione’s trying to sleep. So it never happened.

There’s a written note here from Evergreen State. Something about not messing with the card catalog in the library? Oh, right!  
Kim was in this weird, like “battle of wits” against the card catalog at the university for years, since he was going there and when Soundgarden first started. He’d go there on any given day at any given time to check out a book and like clockwork, he always went to the card catalog, and he could never find the same thing twice and he always had to go back and check it again. He always thought someone in there was playing a prank on him, so come that Christmas seven years ago, he snuck into the school library and disheveled a bunch of the cards in there. Now no one was going to find anything! Aha! Take that, wise guy!  
But much to his chagrin, word got out and Evergreen State put this out: “in the wake of the incident at U-Dub, no, we might consider the idea of changing our school library’s first rule to keep the card catalog under lock and key in the event Kim Thayil shows up.” And I still don’t know if I wanna laugh or cry.

There’s a ticket stub here from a Mudhoney show, the night after Kim came back from Evergreen with the Bettie Page pan. I think I remember this one now--it’s pretty complex, though.  
I was talking to Jerry again about the possibility of getting our very own Clash of the Titans, and I remember we were taking a walk along Alki Beach. I think it was later in the day, like there were these clouds coming in to the north of us from down the Sound. We both had our raincoats on because that feeling hung over us: the wind was blowing our hair all around but we were just a couple of guys walking on the beach and chatting about our future together. And we turn a corner and there’s this absurdly bright sign near the pier. Jerry lifted his hand up to his face and I was like “what the hell?” It looked so out of place and he told me he had an uneasy feeling about this, like this was a sign that Seattle was about to develop too fast for its own good. I remember he went home and called up Layne about it; I remember I went home to find a message on my answering machine from Ben talking about that same sign, how he can actually see it from across the Sound. I think it was that night the three of them plotted their revenge on this sign.  
It was the next day, though, when they got to it to find the best thing they could to get rid of this thing. Meanwhile, I used to be a fan of this Beatles show on our radio station up here, called “Breakfast with the Beatles”, at the end of the show at about eleven thirty, the DJ running it would tell us to stick around after the end because he’d give away tickets to a show: all we had to do was listen for the secret word. It had come to a point it was nigh impossible to find Mudhoney tickets anymore, like they were bridging on going big here in Seattle and being a minor hit elsewhere. So this time around, the Christmas edition program, I stuck around with my cup of coffee and my biscotta and awaited there in the kitchen in anticipation. I closed my eyes and imagined myself covering “Julia” at some point and I knew the end was coming. It came, and it was only followed up by nothing more than a commercial for this place called Biscuit Bitch in downtown Seattle. To which I said “biscuits? Son of a bitch!” Didn’t help it was followed by a commercial for Dick’s Hamburgers and it only made me hungrier.  
But by some miracle, Kurt snagged tickets and he took me and Courtney to see Mudhoney all together down at the Showbox.

I pick up a little shiny red ornament with a glittery Space Needle on one side.  
Anyways, going back to Ben, Layne, and Jerry taking their revenge out on the sign.  
Layne told me the three of them were driving to a hardware store when they heard two guys cursing their lungs overhead; Jerry looked out the windshield and they realized Matt and Sean, who were helping set up the Christmas tree on the Space Needle, were the ones cursing. I found out through Susan that they both got sap in their hair, and like any other guys would’ve done, they let a bunch of bombs drop--hence the origin of the name of the Alice in Chains EP Sap as well as Nirvana’s song “Sappy”.  
Matt told me she dragged the both of them into the bathrooms to rinse out their mouths with soap, and he told her it was unnecessary because we all hear people curse like it’s going out of style, but she also didn’t want us to name our album Louder Than Fuck so what were we to do? And then Sean later added he was tasting soap all the way to Christmas. Then again it was better than the risk of getting trash thrown on us and having Sean nearly have an eye taken out.  
Not even minutes after that incident, Ben told me they reached the hardware store and on the corner, they spotted Eddie, Stone, Kurt, and Krist unloading some things out of Eddie’s truck in front of the post office. Stone, and I quote “triple dog dared” Eddie to stick his tongue to the flagpole. Ben told me he watched him do it as the three of them were climbing out the cab of the truck; he also watched Kurt kick Stone’s amp in, which was sitting right there on the sidewalk where he could kick it in, but by accident. The three of them came back out with some carpentry stuff for work on the sign to find Kurt switching out his amp for Stone’s, and Eddie is actually stuck to the flagpole. Layne turned to Jerry and said “call the fire department.”  
So on the day of Eddie’s birthday, we meet up at Kim’s apartment for breakfast and that was when I found out about the frying pan and the sign situation. Turns out, Ben had gotten a ladder to climb on top of that thing and a can of white primer paint. Jerry suggested putting beebees in a gun and firing at the sign and blowing holes into it, but then again, he couldn’t do that with the fuzz roaming around after Eddie got stuck to the flagpole. So Layne suggested the paint. Well, we couldn’t do it right then because it was Eddie’s birthday and we were all meeting up here in Kim’s apartment for a party.  
I had my worry that Stone would find out about Kurt kicking in his amp and then switching it out, but he never did as he and Mike jammed out “Alive” together. I later found it was actually Mike’s amp that was kicked in, and Stone caught Kurt in the act, but he never told Mike about it as they let out these loud Hendrix-type licks through that cheesy little thing.  
Kim still had the Bettie Page frying pan on hand but he didn’t want to risk cooking anything on it after Ben burned the hell from it. So instead he used it as a fake guitar to play along to “Raining Blood.” Quite the festive notion if I might say so myself, especially when Matt suggested we do it for real at some point during a show.  
Meanwhile, Sean, who was still rinsing soap out from his mouth accidentally took a glass of punch that was meant to be for Eddie because it had a little booze in it. I thought the poor guy was gonna puke right there on Kim’s kitchen floor. And then Eddie finally showed up and the party got started right there.  
It went all night, such that by the next morning we awoke to Christmas music off in the distance. Turns out it came from the sign on Alki Beach--and Kim lived way the hell over in the University District! So our three home boys knew it was time to go all Saturday Night Special on this thing after a brunch of cold cereal and fresh coffee courtesy of Katie and Courtney.  
Since it was the afternoon of Christmas Eve, most people were at home with their families and the forecasts predicted a white Christmas for Seattle, so the fog entered the area at about midday. So we all filed out of Kim’s apartment to watch this thing go down while the clouds were all forming around us and the wind began to pick up. We all gathered around the pier as Ben set up the ladder before the sign while “Deck the Halls” blared out louder than an Anthrax and Megadeth co-headliner.  
But as Jerry and Ben were holding the cans of primer back and about to go Jackson Pollock on this thing, it started snowing. So they made this thing quick: chucking all that white paint over the sign. It didn’t kill the music but it did in fact ruin the sign. And much to our chagrin, we soon found it out it acted as sort of a primitive, temporary lighthouse for the ferries. So Ben couldn’t get home. But we all high-tailed it away from there and moseyed on over to Dick’s Hamburgers. And that’s where we had our Christmas dinner, all of us all together, the boys from Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Nirvana plus Courtney.  
At one point, I asked Jerry if we still had our hearts set on our own Clash of the Titans and he told me one of Susan’s subordinates took it into consideration. And after dinner, I stepped away from there pumping my fists into the air. Maybe I would get my Christmas wish after all.  
I never did, but I still held out hope and I still have hope in such a thing as I’m putting the things back into the box and setting it on the shelf here in the garage. That all of us would come together like we did that Christmas and just be a bunch of friends.


End file.
